CONCORD, N.C. — Danica Patrick would like to think that running the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway last year would help her as she enters NASCAR’s longest event a year later.

But Patrick looks at her results this season and knows that it really doesn’t mean much that her third career Cup start came at Charlotte.

Danica Patrick has struggled most of the season. (NASCAR Media)

At the six tracks where she has raced a Sprint Cup car this year and last year, she had a significantly better finish only in the Daytona 500. She opened the season on a high note, placing eighth in the Daytona 500 for the best ever finish for a female driver in that event.

Her only other promising finish this year was 12th at Martinsville, where she had never raced. The rest of her finishes have been 25th or worse and she is 28th in the Cup standings. She is also trailing the rookie race to boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who has finished in the top 20 in nine of his 11 races and is 16th in the standings.

“Essentially, I had better results in my Cup races last year than I have had this year other than Martinsville and Daytona,” Patrick said. “So we have had a couple of really good highs, but the rest of them have been not so good at all.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She ran 10 Cup races for Stewart-Haas Racing last year so she would have a good foundation, especially at the tougher tracks, for her rookie season.

After Daytona, she struggled and wrecked to finish 39th at Phoenix after running 17th there last November. At Bristol, she finished 28th after running well last year before being wrecked and placing 29th.

Then came Texas, where she finished 28th this year after a 24th-place finish last November.

At Kansas and Darlington, she struggled this year just as she did last year, finishing several laps down and outside the top 20.

If there’s any consolation, SHR as a whole has struggled this year, with owner/driver Tony Stewart 21st in the standings with just one top-10 finish.

“I don’t think I unlearned things from last year, it’s just a matter of getting the car to a place where it does what we all want it to do as drivers on the team,” Patrick said. “I feel comfortable (at Charlotte). There is a lot of stuff I don’t worry so much about and I can just get in the car and go.

“But things I am more familiar with are looking at a tire sheet, or understanding what happens to a car in the corner and being able to translate to (crew chief) Tony Gibson.”

Patrick finished ninth in the Sprint Showdown last week and got the fan vote to make it into the Sprint All-Star Race. She finished 20th among 22 driver — last among those who finished the race — though she stayed with the pack and raced the drivers running at the rear.

“It really all comes to being comfortable with the car that you have underneath you to be able to go do the job you need to do,” Patrick said.

She hopes she leaves Charlotte this weekend better than last week.

“It really just makes me feel bad to win the Sprint fan vote and run in the back of the race. … It was just a tough night,” Patrick said.

“But hopefully we are able to figure out what was wrong and we can come back here (this) weekend and have a better run.”